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NASA Will Roam Around Mars with RoverNews story originally written on August 5, 2000

NASA has announced the next mission to visit the planet Mars. The Mars
Exploration Program Rover will start its journey in 2003 and should reach the
Red Planet in 2004. This rover will be a more advanced Sojourner Rover, which
visited Mars in 1997, as part of the Pathfinder mission.

The rover mission was chosen over an orbiter mission. The rover will land on the planet
and search around for evidence of water. The orbiter would have stayed in space while
imaging Mars.

Scientists are very excited about this newest rover. Sojourner was only able to travel
100 meters over its entire mission. But the new rover will travel 100 meters each day.
We will now study a lot more of the Mars surface and will hopefully find evidence that
water once existed on Mars.

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